“The madam lied to us,” Emily continued. “Thirty seconds have passed, but there are no blisters. Perhaps she’s thick-skinned? All right, it doesn’t matter. It seems to me, the system has just switched off. She’s so lucky!”
Spinning twice more and snorting, Rosalinda stopped in her tracks as she raised her head above the water level and waited. A bit later she sat up. Wiping her face with her palms and pushing her hair back, she looked about. Her face expressed nothing but terror.
The elevator doors opened.
“Flee now! As fast as you can!” Emily advised.
Rosalinda flew out of the fountain like a ballistic missile from a submarine and ran to the elevator. Wet clothes stuck to her body and instead of concealing her rolls of fat they now accentuated them. Entering the elevator, the woman hit the button a few times desperately. The doors shut. A faint buzz of the elevator going down was heard.
A moment later the bamboo doors drew apart without noise.
“I guess everything’s working fine now,” Emily stood up and looked at Barkov with a pleased smile. “Shall we start looking for the hacker?”
A part of Andrew knew that Emily should be reprimanded. She was still under arrest and should have executed his orders – after all he was still a public officer! On the other hand, he was not like his boss Palmer who hated any initiatives of his subordinates.
I have to admit the girl did well. She’s smart. And she achieved her aim!
“Let’s go.”
They made their way to the open doors, but a tall, lean man of about fifty came out before them. He wore a black suit, a white shirt and black shining shoes. His dark blonde hair was slicked back and the tips of his neat thin mustache were bent up. He stood in the doorway, raised his hands slowly and clapped several times. “Bravo, Emily Housman! Bravo! You are a real godsend. I’m ready to hire you. How much do you want a year?”
“Who are you?” Barkov asked.
“The one you’re looking for. Let me introduce myself: Lippo Lorenzetti, a computer technology expert.”
He bowed courteously.
In appearance, he was a typical dandy of the end of the nineteenth – the beginning of the twentieth century. Andrew had expected to see someone totally different – a person in creased jeans and a shirt worn outside the jeans, twenty years younger at that.
“Glad to meet you. My name is – ”
“Andrew, I know your name. I studied your file while your companion played with my poor assistant.” A shadow of a smile flitted across his face. “It must be admitted that I had been thinking about replacing her for a long time. She’s been eating too many sweets lately. Hopefully you, Emily, eat carefully to control your weight! But this is not the main point. I would be very interested in a person who can control electronics by force of her thought. How do you do that? I’ve never seen anything like that in my life!”
The girl tried to object. “Me? I can’t control any electronics. Why do you think – ”
“Don’t lie to me!” Lippo interrupted her in a calm and self-confident way. “I have equipment all around, as you mentioned rightly in the very beginning. The sensors detected the signal coming from you. It was quite strong! Haven’t you tried to light up lamps? For a fraction of a second at least?”
She shook her head.
“That’s okay!” Lorenzetti continued. “I’m not interested in lamps. We are not performing in a circus after all. On the contrary, our task is to stay in the shade. When you, dear Emily, start working with me, I’ll explain the rules to you in detail. Will six hundred thousand credits a year be sufficient for you?”
The girl’s eyes dilated. “Six hundred thousand? Legally?”
“Yes. Absolutely legally.”
“Of course it will!” She took a squint at Andrew for a second. “Well, on condition that we fulfill our mission first, that I’ll be free and the planet will not freeze or melt in the meantime. What will I have to do?”
“I’ll explain later. So, once again: do you accept?”
“Yes!”
“Excellent. In this case, my friends, let’s get down to your problem first. You were interested in some secret documents, weren’t you? Something about a refuge for the government?”
“Yes,” answered Andrew.
“What for?”
“I want to find out if the President told the truth about consequences of the planet’s core braking.”
“To what end?”
“To know what future awaits us. And to get ready.”
Lorenzetti laughed again. “To know the future? Do you think the President or any other mortal beings know God’s ways? And how can you get ready for what you have no idea about? My opinion is as follows: if the planet is fated to destruction, it will be destroyed. I’ll give you a simpler example: if you are fated to get smashed up in a road accident, you won’t drown in a swamp! Do you think you are able to change the march of time?”
If Andrew hadn’t known who he was talking to, he would have decided that this was an orthodox priest.
“I’m willing to try.”
The hacker laughed haughtily. “I pity you, but I won’t impose my opinion on you. One day you will realize your fundamental mistake. Follow me!”
Going through the open doors, he stopped in the middle of the next room. This room was twice as small. There were no windows in it, but it was lit up brightly by built-in lamps on the ceiling.
“This is my home office,” Lorenzetti said proudly as he spread his arms. “No sounds penetrate here from outside. An ideal place for work, isn’t it?”
Barkov glanced back. The doors shut behind them. This side of them seemed to be made of a white material equal to the material of the walls. No gap shown between the door panels. Were it not for a pair of metal door handles, one could have thought that the wall itself closed.
Is it a trap?
“A strange office,” Andrew said trying not to manifest his uneasiness. “Where are the tables and chairs?”
“I don’t use them as I prefer to work in the standing position. But I’ll let you sit down.” He raised his voice. “Computer! Lift two chairs!”
A part of the floor moved apart before his feet. From the square opening, two light brown spheres resembling large balls of wool emerged. Coming abreast with the floor surface, the spheres rolled to the wall on the left. Meanwhile, the floor closed.
Having stopped at the wall, the balls flattened. A hollow appeared on one side of them while the other side stretched up and bent. This resulted in two armchairs.
“Self-moving transformers,” Lorenzetti explained. “They can take the form of a table, a sofa, a carpet or, as in this case, an armchair. Have a seat!”
Andrew had seen advertisements of such goods, but had never bought them because of their high price. Lippo has lots of money. With his kind of work, it’s natural that he’d earn big fees. But what else might Lippo be involved in? What if legal work for various companies is just a cover, and Lippo is an ordinary crook with extraordinary abilities? If I wasn’t going to leave my job, it would be interesting to conduct an investigation.
He and Emily went to the armchairs and sat down.
“Is it comfortable?” the hacker asked with a pleased smile looking